1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image forming devices, image forming systems, and image forming methods that select and print desired data from data held in an external storage device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known a printing system in which an image forming device, an information terminal device serving as its client, a bibliographic information server that stores and manages bibliographic information of print data, and an information processing device that stores the print data are connected to each other through a network. As the image forming device, an MFP (Multi-Function Peripheral) or an LBP (Laser Beam Printer) is used, for example. As the information terminal device, a PC (Personal Computer) is used, for example. As the information processing device that stores print data, a storage server is used, for example. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-105937 discloses such a printing system.
In this printing system, a user stores print data from the PC to the storage server, and the storage server then registers the location of the print data in the bibliographic information server. The user selects the print data registered in the bibliographic information server via an operation panel of the MFP, and downloads and prints this data from the storage server.
The above-described pull-print system has an advantage that once a user registers print data in the pull-print system, the data can be printed from any image forming device according to the circumstances of the user or the congestion of the image forming device, thus improving the convenience for the user. Moreover, in printing, it is also possible to prevent theft of a print document because the user is close to the image forming device outputting the print document.
In the above-described printing system, the convenience or security of a user has been taken into consideration, however once the printing is completed in the image forming device, this print data is deleted from the storage server without determining whether the printing was successful or not. For this reason, if the printing was unsuccessful, the print data has to be registered in the storage server again, and therefore there is a problem that the convenience after printing has not been taken into consideration.
In order to solve this problem, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. H08-9121 (1996) discloses a mechanism of temporarily leaving the document in a server.
However, the above-described prior art has the following problems. That is, if print data is deleted from the storage server after a certain period of time although a user schedules printing of this data, then the printing is impossible. In order to print this data, a print job has to be input from a PC again. Moreover, if print data is temporarily left in the storage server, print data that is not scheduled to be printed will remain on the storage server, resulting in a decrease in the data capacity on the server. Moreover, if a mechanism of allowing a user to delete a document via an operation part is provided, the user will be forced into an action, and thus the operability is hardly good.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an image forming device, an image forming system, and an image forming method that provide, in a pull-print system, greater convenience for users and reduce the capacity of print data stored in a server.